Memorial Flat of Vasily Belov was first presented to museum community in June

In late June, the Memorial Flat of Vasily Belov was first introduced to the museum community at the Creative Problem Workshop of Directors of Russian Literary Museums named after N.V. Shakhalova “Literary Museums in 21st Century. Traditions and Innovations”. It was held in the Moscow region from June 19 to 24, 2017. At the opening ceremony of the event, Elvira Trikoz, head of the memorial flat, and Sergey Stupin, director of the Irkutsk Regional Museum of Local Studies who represented the Museum of V.G. Rasputin, told about the recently opened literary museums, the history of their establishment and museum projects. It is notable that the beginning of the 21st century was marked by the opening of four literary museums in the country – the museums of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Joseph Brodsky, Valentin Rasputin and Vasily Belov. According to the organizers of the workshop, members of the Union of Museums of Russia, there are not enough literary museums in our country (literary memorial, literary and art, museums about the history of literature). For instance, there are a little bit more that 100 people per one literary museum in some European countries and over 160 thousand people – in Russia. The museums in Russia are located irregularly within the country; most of them are certainly situated in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Tatarstan. Most of the names represented by the literary museums characterize the 19th and the 20th centuries. The 18th century is represented by only five writers and the 15th-17th centuries are not represented on the literary museum map of the country at all. Therefore establishment of the literary museums is an important event in the culture of Russia!   

Heads and employees of almost 50 literary museums of the country met at this workshop. Round table discussions, meetings of the Association of Literary Museums in the Union of Museums of Russia, tours of memorial and literary exhibitions in the museums of the Moscow region and Moscow took place on various grounds of the museums located near the capital. They discussed some issues of inter-museum exhibitions in 2018, experience of organization of foreign displays in the years to come, completion of work on the encyclopedia “Literary Museums of Russia” (the project of the popular scientific reference book was proposed by the State Literary Museum and was aimed at the integration of data about the literary museums in Russia, their history and collections). This encyclopedia will contain an article about the Memorial Flat of Vasily Belov that has been already written by its employees.

In the organizers’ opinion, this workshop was the most representative one within 33 years of its history – from Moscow and St. Petersburg to Irkutsk and the Crimea. The next workshop of the directors will be held in the A.M. Gorky Museum in Nizhny Novgorod in July 2018.

Pictures were taken by the organizers of the workshop, the State Literary Museum.